Computing devices are increasingly becoming smaller in size due in part to better hardware fabrication processes that enables smaller processors, storage devices, displays and other components. This trend in smaller hardware components has led to a growth in mobile devices, beginning with notebook computers, transitioning to Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and more recently culminating in advanced cellular mobile devices that are commonly referred to as “smart phones.” This trend toward smaller hardware components has increased the mobility of computing through smaller form factors without sacrificing computing performance or user functionality. In other words, the trend toward miniaturization of hardware components typically provides the same if not better computing performance and user functionality as the predecessor larger scale hardware components.
While this trend toward miniaturization has enabled users to carry more sophisticated mobile devices with them on a daily basis, the user still must interact with these devices in some manner to utilize the functionality and increased computing performance offered by these devices. The trend to increasingly smaller form factors may therefore be limited by the ability of users to interact with or use the devices. This limit may be referred to as a usability limit and ultimately constrains the ability of the user to input information into such a device.
To overcome this usability limit, many device manufactures have begun to provide different ways by which users may interact with the mobile devices. For example, some mobile devices provide a miniaturized physical keyboard. Other mobile devices eliminate the physical keyboard and provide a touch-screen display with which a user may interact using either a finger or a stylus. By utilizing this touch-screen display, the device manufacturer can eliminate buttons that would otherwise increase the form factor of the mobile device and instead utilize the touch-screen display as a versatile and configurable button. In some instances, the mobile device may utilize the touch-screen display to recognize gestures, such as handwriting or letter gestures, to eliminate physical keyboards and other text entry input devices altogether. As a result, these touch-screen mobile devices may seek to maximize the screen size yet maintain a smaller form factor by eliminating most or all physical buttons or other physical input devices. However, in such cases the user is forced to learn how to interact with a touch-screen keyboard which may behave substantially different from a physical keyboard.